CUPAR, Sask. – When Tyler Weisbrod was 17 he planted a couple hundred saskatoon trees in his family’s farmyard, mostly out of curiousity.
A year later, trying to decide what type of farming operation he wanted, he used the rural municipality’s shelterbelt transplanter to plant 10 acres of saskatoons on a field not far from home.
The next year, he put in another 10 acres and his fate was sealed.
With more than $10,000 invested in bushes, originally paid for by his dad and repaid with a year’s labour on the family’s grain and bison farm, Weisbrod, 25, is now a bona fide fruit grower.
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He said Loon Creek Saskatoons is a family operation, but he makes most of the key decisions.
Seventeen of the 20 acres are producing fruit, even this year, when many growers saw their berry crops wiped out by a fungus called entomosporium.
Timely spraying of Topaz three times preserved his crop. He was careful to make sure the last spraying was well ahead of harvest.
Weisbrod sells about 90 percent of the crop to Last Mountain Berry Farm at Southey, Sask., where it is processed into all types of products and shipped across Canada.
The rest of the berries go to the Regina Farmers’ Market, where pie makers snap them up.
Weisbrod is also experimenting with a saskatoon berry beverage he developed at the Saskatchewan Food Industry Development Centre in Saskatoon.
Still, he’s not sure where this is all leading.
“As we speak, I can’t actually say I’m making a living,” he said.
Saskatoon berry growers don’t expect to make money from their bushes for the first five or six years after planting.
Weisbrod, who has an agricultural diploma from the University of Saskatchewan, spent several January-to-June periods working for Bayer Crop-Science to earn some off-farm income.
His goal is to develop a niche value-added market for his berries, like the juice he’s working on, rather than enter the traditional jams and jellies market.
The fruit business has been a steep learning curve but Weisbrod learned about the value of trying new ventures from his parents, Stan and Kathy.
“Dad is always willing to try different things and I guess I picked up on that,” he said.
The Weisbrods have grown special crops like coriander and this year are trying hemp.
Earlier, Tyler tried growing echinacea. He also has a shelterbelt of sea buckthorn in the middle of his orchard that might offer a future opportunity.
This year he planted SK Carmine Jewel dwarf sour cherries where some saskatoons didn’t establish. He is testing five other sour cherry varieties for the U of S and intends to add raspberries to the mix.
A row of hybrid poplars lines the east side of the orchard.
Weisbrod is out in the orchard every day keeping tabs on insects and disease. He believes that a good weeding program is key to fighting a fungus like entomosporium, which is soil-borne and starts with the bottom leaves, moving upward.
He uses an implement called the Weed Badger to get underneath the bushes and as close to the roots as possible. He said it works better for his purposes than a cultivator and would have paid for itself five years ago for what he paid local youths to pull weeds.
“It gets about 85 percent of the weeds. Fifteen percent of (weeds) are right inside the bush and you still need to hand weed.”
Weeds harbour disease, cut down on the air circulation around the bottom of the plants and make it harder to control pests.
“If you’ve got a pile of weeds, all you’re doing is spraying the weeds, not your plants.”
Weisbrod, a director of the Saskatchewan Fruit Growers Association, is a fairly rare breed; only two of 17 boys in his high school graduating class are still on the farm.
“It’s a little more relaxing than working 9 to 5 for someone else,” he said. “But you are at the mercy of Mother Nature. That’s my boss.”
